Sour Sausage Vendor (Wednesday Photo)

Michael Babcock, June 24th, 2009

On the Grill

Sour Sausage Vendor

This picture shows a common sight in Thailand – a street food vendor with a very basic set-up: it can be relatively inexpensive to set up as a vendor. The picture was taken in front of a historical ruin in Ayuthaya.

Sour sausage, in this case, Stuffed Sour Sausage with Sticky Rice (Saigkrawk Naem) is a fairly common street food. It’s a simple recipe – ground pork, cooked rice and salt, mixed, stuffed and left out several days to ferment. The vendor also gives you a bag of condiments to be eaten with each bite of the sausage, typically peanuts, sliced ginger, whole Thai chillies (prik kee noo) – you bite off as much as you want – and often cabbage.

5 Responses to “Sour Sausage Vendor (Wednesday Photo)”

Hey Brett, I get where you are coming from, why is the entire stack in a spiral, I think you mean like are they cooking the middle ones and as they cook first then cut them off and pull the string if you like and the other sausages slowly get closer to the heat!

I wonder is that really what is going on, I never paid any attention before but it makes some sense at least? That way you should know which sausages are likely to be finished next as well yeah? No guessing which ones you put on last anymore with the sausage ring cooking method!!

Looks great, almost wish I could smell them cooking as well…. what do you think Brett/Michael is that why the whole string of sausages is in a curve??

I asked Kasma about this one. She says that the sausage naturally curl that way because they are stuffed in intestines, which have a natural curve. It has more to do with that than cooking time. With the grills such as the one above, it’s fairly easy to move the coals around to push them out to the edge. The charcoal in Thailand does not burn very hot and can go down to a really low heat (unlike Mesquite, here) so things can be left on the grill longer. There’s not a lot of cooking time involved; just browning the sausage.